1.2.4-Aresnergal
Brick!club 1.2.4. - DÉTAILS SUR LES FROMAGERIES DE PONTARLIER Okay I’m not starting in the best way on this one because I don’t like epistolary stuff. It almost always sounds so weird when one person remembers exactly a conversations and everything that happens AND feels the need to write it to someone. But that’s just me. So yeah, basically in this we first learn that Baptistine is shocked by the social awkwardness of Jean Valjean who remarks that they eat less here than those guys he saw before. I kinda like the “are you curé (I don’t know the english equivalent, sorry) ? if God was just, you’d be curé” Bishop : God is more than just =D But of course Jean Valjean can’t guess that a dude living in a common house and eating soup is actually high in the hierarchy and has the right to a palace and carriages and a salary of 15 000 livres so yeah. Also I’m not sure why the bishop absolutely avoid telling his rank, I don’t mean that he should brag about it but there he almost hides it, that’s weird XD Then they talk about Pontarlier where Valjean is supposed to go, in particular the dairy farming, which means CHEESE FUCK YEAH FOR CHEESE THE NATIONAL PRODUCT THAT SHOULD BE ON OUR FLAG LIKE, Do you hear the cows mowing, mowing the song of delicious cheese, okay i’ll stop. And in short the bishop talked about this industry and that he and Baptistine have relatives in the area and he talks about the works and stuff. Reading carefully permits us to know that he was, in fact, trying to suggest Valjean to try to enter that particular industry, all with the relative subtlety of a grand organ falling on your head. I think however that it’s great that he focuses on that rather than his history or past sins and repentance, because certainly it helps much more to help his rehabilitation than to try to make him feel sorry for his theft plenty years ago, especially since he was abused long enough after that “crime”. So, well, yay for charity and yay for the bishop on that one, I guess ! Now digression because I see pilferingapple has some vocabulary confusion; I don’t think “'patriarchal'" here means as in "run by guys" but more like, "run by a patriarch", as in ONE kind of old "venerable" dude who’d be like a father to his employees or something ? So that it feels like a family ? I’m not sure and I could be wrong, that’s just what I feel it’s saying, considering pretty much everything was run by men, I’d think patriarchal at the time would be less commonly used in that modern sense, considering it was the "default" setting, but as I said, I could be wrong ! As for the pelt, the french says “une peau de chevreuil de la Forêt-Noire”. I think your edition that says goat has confused “chèvre”, which means goat, with “chevreuil”, which means roe deer, so yup for the roe deer ! Also it comes from the Black Forest in Germany and I’d guess there are more deers than goats in there. Commentary Pilferingapples I thought it was kind of weird to be raising GOATS in the Black Forest, but heck, maybe they were special forest-goats for a special market. Go, FMA. And yeah, I agree about ‘patriarchal’ surely not being used in the modern sense, unless that made it remarkable in some way.So it’s probably more equivalent to “paternal” here? Was cheesemaking typically female? LET’S TALK ABOUT AGRICULTURE (actually I’m surprised the next chapter isn’t an in-depth description of what mkaes a ‘grurin’. Hugo, were you ill?). I would GUESS that the Bishop keeps silent here because he’s trying now to seem unapproachable; reading Valjean’s impression of a what a bishop IS, it’s hard to believe he’d be comfortable discussing all his troubles with one, and Myriel clearly wants everyone to feel safe with him.